Wilson's War: Tales From the Athena Lee Universe (6 page)

Athena Lee, the only friend that he had in the galaxy was locked up in a small cell being tortured for something that she didn't do. Wilson was frantic. If a computer program could be frantic, he was the one. Hmmm there is a song there somewhere. Was it the
Naked lady
that sang that? No, that's not right. I will have to look for it. You would think that an 'all-knowing' computer would know everything. Athena like to say that to him. First things first, save his friend. To do that he would have to get into the Station's computer network. The internal security was run by a military AI. Wilson guessed that the AI might be a grandchild of his. But who cares, it was going down!

Breaking in was pretty easy. Station security has a real porn problem. They have no idea the kind of malware that Wilson could create. One wrong click on that
unspeakable
act and boom he was in. "Haven't these people ever heard of firewalls?" How far the Navy has fallen. It was the attempt to enter the surveillance system that attracted the attention of 'Junior'. Junior was one of the newest AI's created by the Navy's Encom division. It was the newest MPC model that ENCOM had put out. It had lightning fast speeds with a full defensive battery of virus protection. Wilson liked a challenge. This should be fun.

Firing off the first salvo, Wilson announced himself by infiltrating the waste maintenance system. He tried to get into the mainframe from there. The younger AI stopped him throwing up a defensive screen. Wilson reversed the flow in the lavatories, putting up a flashing sign on the booths that 'cousin Eddie says hello'. Junior countered by blocking his access, chasing him into the food preparation computer. Ever had a pizza made with pineapples, anchovies, hot sauce and Limburger cheese? Governor Buckley unknowingly ordered 25 of those before Junior caught Wilson and blocked his access to the governor's private food account. The pizza's were out for delivery. Jumping from system to system the two opponents were freaking out the security experts who had no idea what was happening. Their electronic battle was playing havoc with every system that they encountered.

Wilson was having the time of his life. From food dispensers to laundry services he was messing with everything. Uniform doesn't fit? Did you check to see if it is even yours? HAHAHAHA Time to play! Very slowly he was gaining the access that he needed. The trick was keeping junior off balance.

Wilson gained control of the cameras in the civilian quarter. Seeing a row of civilian shops and restaurants he remarked to himself "A lot of room in this mall!" Spotting a pet shop he saw what might be the 'straw' that he was looking for.

Inside the shop was a collection of small pets that can be kept in healthy environments and were low maintenance. Small breed cats, rabbits, hamsters, weasels, mice, and chinchillas. What caught his eye was the large cage of parakeets. About 300 of them. The shop records said that they had just received them and that they were all 'wild' caught. The ant farms and cricket cage looked like fun too. Lots of small spaces on a space station.

The night shift of station security did not know what had hit them. It started with sensor reports showing movement in impossible places such as the inner walls and the sky view ports. Reports came in from civilians about ants and weird chirping coming from inside personal quarters. Ants? In space? Really? Security made a note to sent a maintenance team and wrote 'crazy' in the logs. Day shift looked at the logs and thought that those guys on night shift must be all smoking something. That is until the foot patrol entered the mall area. It is surprising the amount of havoc that 300 free flying parakeets can cause in a sealed space environment. Droppings aside the flying specs of green and yellow were getting into everything trying to make nests. Station maintenance were overwhelmed with calls about a cricket invasion. Chirping that seemed to be everywhere that no one could find. All the reports and sensor readings distracted Junior enough that Wilson slipped right in. "Hello there, won't you guess my name?" he said to the young AI as he electronically trapped him in a small room and threw away the key. Success! Now to save my friend.

The ESS security agency and Senate offices soon received official but not authorized transmissions of the events of Athena Lee's arrest and interrogation. The contents and the method of these transmissions totally freaked them out. A fleet was sent to fix it and trace the security leak. The arriving agents with the cooperation of the Navy 'fixed' Athena Lee's situation. The security leak? What security leak? Station security had no knowledge of a leak. When asked the 'new' AI also had no knowledge of anything. When the ESS agents checked they saw that the AI was newly installed. It had been created by the WILSN company and was 714 of the
Friday
line of AI's.

Several weeks later a much healed Athena Lee was happy to be out of the medical bay. She had a short free moment before the media circus took hold and she was 'back' in the Navy. This station had a small civilian shopping area that she wanted to check out. Her minders, security agents 'Turner and Hooch', were still around but had given her some privacy. The mall had a small green area. There was some commotion ahead. Station maintenance were lying about with anti-grav units holding nets trying to catch what looked like small birds. The green area trees were simply filled with them. She thought to herself as she peeked into a shop window "why let birds go in the first place? That must have been a birdbrained idea." Wilson, for once, kept his thoughts to himself.

Mr Wilson's Wild Ride.

By

T S Paul

This story takes place after the events in Revolutionary, and before Insurrection.

"Space really is beautiful or at least that is what they tell me. I can look out at it through all the cameras on every ship and every station in orbit. It all looks the same to me, boring. I really need something to do. Athena would tell me "Wilson go read a database or go learn something new from the FLEA scientists. For geeks they're pretty boring. I really need to find something fun to do at the expense of others."

I watched from every camera, all 579 of them, the active space around Legation Station. In over half the cameras, there is two planetary fighter squadrons having mock battles with each other. Those ships are everywhere diving and chasing each other around the system and in between the ships. Work crews repairing damage done to the station cursed the pilots as they got in the way of the construction drones. Everyone seemed to be under a time crunch.

Everyone but me. I did my duty for computer and country. My best friend and companion Athena loves to tell me that I am an 'all-knowing computer' that knows nothing. Not really my fault, those idiot scientists that created me, made me a funny man. I will admit that I like to have fun. Screwing with humans is a bunch of fun. Much better than breaking into secured databases and learning things. Although I have learned some 'cool' stuff from history tapes, science fiction books, and watching private home movies. The faces those humans make while having sex is… Hold the phone? What is that? That looks like fun. I just found my new 'toy' for the day.

The FLEA scientists still shaken from the recent death of their boss, Dr. Kip Wilson, were giving the local Government all the assistance they asked for. Many prototypes and short runs of some new and some strange weapon systems were being dusted off and rolled out. One such system was the Mark 1
R
emote
O
perated
F
ighter
L
ogistics system. Or ROFL for short. The system allowed remote pilots to fly ships without being on them. It was originally designed for repair work in a hard to reach planet atmospheres or for sending probes into a sun. The Navy thought that it might come in handy during a fight and considered it for Carrier groups to cut down of pilot losses. The inertial compensators in the ships could be disengaged with no pilot to protect, the ships could fly faster and take maneuver's better. Most of the tests failed however, human reflexes were not fast enough to control them in combat. The price of not using the pilots was too high, and the system was scrapped. The prototype had been sitting in the warehouse since the last war collecting dust.

Athena Lee and the Militia leaders thought to try using the system with the Navy fighter squadron from the station. They lacked experienced pilots to fly the high tech birds. The plan was to use shuttle and other non-military pilots in the ships. The Militia's pilots had preferred to use the ships they knew, rather than upgrade to something strange.

I watched as techs installed the drone packages in all the fighters. For some reason they had let the compensators on, maybe they did not want to scare the civilians too much. No weapons? I guess this was a test flight. Heh heh heh. Time for some fun. I checked back with Athena, to make sure she was busy somewhere else. Looking through her eyes I saw her having dinner with Dar, her girlfriend. Good she was busy. Just to make sure, I tweaked the alert notification on her link. If there was real trouble, I could notify her. If I had hands, I would be rubbing them together about now. That or stroking Mr. Gigglesworth and laughing. Wait, that's not right. I have to watch that vid again now.

Dorene and DJ, the two new computer techs, had arrived on-station just before the recent troubles. They came from opposites sides of the galaxy. DJ was from Mars on the Earth home system. Dorene was from Greenlandia out on the edge of civilized space on one of the Scandinavian colonies. They looked so much alike that most people thought they were twins. They even shared the same quarters. Their assignment was to install the computer modules in the Navy fighters. So far they had put in ten with zero problems. For some reason the ships computer on these last two would not accept any access.

Dorene opened the cockpit door and stuck her head out. She yelled at her 'twin' "Hey DJ!" Silence. "DJ!" She yelled almost screaming her name.

"What!" Came the reply. "I'm working here!"

For sweet girls they both had the mouths like sailors.

"The computer won't accept commands, it's like it's stuck in a diagnostic routine. What about yours? Did you get it in?"

"You sound like my last boyfriend. 'Is it in yet?' Just stop you are starting to get on my nerves. I still haven't made all the connections." She struggled with it and the system box finally locked into place with a snap. DJ peered at the controls and typed on her portable computer. "What the freaking hell is wrong with this Damn thing! Hey Dorene! What did you do to this box?"

There was a loud pounding on the cockpit 'windscreen', DJ looked up and Dorene was peering in at her. She opened the cockpit door.

"What did you do to this thing? It won't accept a command."

"Me? You are blaming me? Whatever did I do to you?" DJ was starting to get angry.

"I think you are still angry at me for tossing out that ratty old fur coat of yours."

"Damn right I'm mad, that was a family heirloom passed down from my mothers family. She claimed it was pure chinchilla!"

"What the hell is a chinchilla? Sounds like some kind of snack or something." Dorene loved arguing with DJ, they would laugh about it later.

"Mom always said it was a rare and beautiful creature that was very hard to hunt."

"You know what I think? I think that.." At that moment they realized that they were not alone. A very large shadow now covered them. As one they both turned to face the Deck officer, Lieutenant Xan.

"Ladies? Were you aware that the fighters are beginning to power up?" The lieutenant was a very tall man who, at this moment, did not look amused.

The 'twins' looked back at each other, then around the hangar. All the fighters, including the ones they'd just finished, were powering up. At practically the same time they both answered. "It wasn't us!"

"Sir, we did notice some kind of diagnostic that would not let us input commands. We were just discussing it now." Dorene was the first to answer. "It must be a malfunction of some kind. Even if they power up, the hanger doors are closed where are they going to go?"